Category: Taxes

“Tax credits in President Obama’s healthcare law aren’t big enough to prompt small businesses to start offering healthcare benefits, the Government Accountability Office said Monday. The small-business tax credit has not lived up to expectations. The Congressional Budget Office initially estimated that the credits would total $2 billion in 2010, but the real cost that year only came to $468 million, GAO said.”

“In 2010, however, Congress, ravenous for revenue to fund Obamacare, included in the legislation a 2.3 percent tax on gross revenue — which generally amounts to about a 15 percent tax on most manufacturers’ profits — from U.S. sales of medical devices beginning in 2013. This will be piled on top of the 35 percent federal corporate tax, and state and local taxes. The 2.3 percent tax will be a $20 billion blow to an industry that employs more than 400,000, and $20 billion is almost double the industry’s annual investment in research and development.”

“There is an absurd report out today from Families USA which breathlessly states that, ‘3.2 million small businesses, employing 19.3 million workers across the nation, will be eligible for [a small business tax credit under Obamacare].’
Note the word, ‘eligible.’ Meaning, that this many businesses can claim this tax credit. Whether many actually will is another question. The credit in question is a byzantine and confusing provision which most small employers won’t try to use.”

“As you may know, the Affordable Care Act raises taxes on pretty much everyone, directly or indirectly, in order to fund its expansion of coverage for the uninsured. Most of these new taxes are unwise policy. But one Obamacare tax increase stands out for sheer boneheadedness: the law’s tax on insurance premiums, a provision that will raise taxes paid by the government itself, and make insurance less affordable.”

“On March 13, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated its score of Obamacare, announcing that the program is $48 billion cheaper than in its previous 2011 score.
The primary reason for this change is that more individuals will lose their employer-provided coverage than originally anticipated, and the government will collect $99 billion more in taxes and penalties. CBO also finds that there are more uninsured individuals.
In short, this new CBO update continues the trend of Obamacare becoming increasingly expensive and decreasingly effective with each new scoring update.”

“To help pay ObamaCare’s steep costs, Washington placed a tax on medical device sales. The ugly results: Higher costs that hurt patients, destroy jobs and curb the innovation that extends life and brings relief.
The basic medical devices that we can buy at the retail level won’t be subject to the tax, which begins next year. But devices sold by wholesalers to health care providers will be.”

“Under the health care overhaul, the federal government will start taxing itself and the states beginning in 2014. And that’s giving state Medicaid directors heartburn. A report released Tuesday by the actuarial firm Milliman Inc. said the tax will cost the Medicaid program between $36.5 billion and $41.9 billion over 10 years. At least $13 billion will be borne by states, and at least $23.5 billion by the federal government, based on the state-federal Medicaid matching formula.”

“Unfortunately, Obamacare threatens to bring American innovation to a screeching halt. To fund their trillion-dollar health care plan, Democrats socked some of their favorite villains — insurers, drug companies and medical device firms — with onerous new taxes.
The impact of these new taxes on health care innovation will be nothing short of disastrous. They will deprive firms of money that they otherwise might spend on research and development.”

“Yet another provision of ObamaCare has been found unworkable… Now it turns out the much-vaunted tax credit for small employers is also a bomb. At a recent (November 15, 2011) hearing of the Ways and Means Committee, the Treasury Department’s Inspector General J. Russell George reported that as of mid-October 2011 only 309,000 taxpayers had claimed the credit, for a total payout of $416 million — far below the 4.4 million the IRS thought would be eligible or the CBO estimate of $2 billion that would be paid out in 2010 alone.”